This invention involves a holder of objects, specifically rounded objects, such as spheres particularly string wound baseballs and a coating apparatus to coat objects using a bath of the coating liquid.
A variety of devices have been used to hold objects with many of the devices and methods described for handling fruit, such as apples, peaches, oranges and like fruit generally of a spherical shape. In the handling of fruit and for the handling of others objects such as string wound baseball cores, a single or multiple pin stabbing device may be used to impale the object and hold it while some type of action is applied to the object, such as coating the object with a liquid as with a cement. These stabbing devices have been single pins or multiple pins grouped to pierce the object at a central location.
In applying a coating to a single object, such as continuous processes have been described. For coating a string wound baseball with a cement to hold the strings in place, few if any continuous processes have been described, but it is known that a continuous coating process may utilize a chain drive to carrying ball holders from station to station with a spinning mechanism to spin the holders after the coating has been applied to remove any excess liquid. These would be large, cumbersome devices which provide a large through-put, but many suffer from mechanical failure and substantial maintenance difficulties.
The above devices and methods do not satisfy the needs in the industry to provide a compact efficient coating apparatus including a holder of the objects to be coated nor do these devices attain the objects listed herein below.